Rookie Marc Márquez Sets Pole Record In Austin

Repsol Honda Team rider Marc Márquez sets new record for youngest pole position in MotoGP

// Marquez Sets Pole Record

On Saturday, MotoGP took to the track at Circuit of The Americas for back-to-back practice and qualifying sessions. Repsol Honda Team's Dani Pedrosa set the fastest lap in Free Practice 3 with a time of 2'04.408 and his teammate, Marc Márquez, came in at 2'04.795. However, Márquez shaved even more time off his best lap, cutting down his lap time to to 2'03.779 in Free Practice 4 and overtaking Pedrosa. At the end of FP4, it was Marquez, Pedrosa (2'04.183), Yamaha Factory Racing's Jorge Lorenzo (2'04.680), Monster Yamaha Tech 3's Cal Crutchlow (2'04.825) and LCR Honda MotoGP's Stefan Bradl (2'04.996) rounding out the top five.

With a short break after the practice sessions, the first qualifying session began with the back half of the grid taking to the track first. Unlike Formula 1, MotoGP ranks the riders based on their cumulative practice times following FP4. The slowest riders then proceed to Qualifying 1 and are ranked relative to each other. Next, the top two riders from Q1 proceed for a chance to continue the fight in the second qualifying session against the top ten riders. When the dust settles, Q2 has twelve total riders competing to post the best lap time.

Today's Q1 session was lead by Aleix Espargaro (2'06.112), with Bradley Smith (2'06.951) and Andrea Iannone (2'06.872) following behind. Espargaro and Smith advanced into Q2 and eventually placed 9th and 11th, respectively.

The top qualifying position for tomorrow's Inaugural Red Bull Grand Prix of The Americas was taken by the young star, Marc Márquez, whose impressive performance this weekend reached a new high when he set the top track record of 2'03.021 in Q2. This is Márquez's first pole in MotoGP and in addition to this great achievement, Márquez is now the youngest MotoGP rider to qualify on pole position.

Unable to take back the lead in the second qualifying session, teammate Dani Pedrosa set his top time of 2'03.275. Following Pedrosa, Lorenzo set the third fastest time of 2'04.100.

Here's the full, official lineup for tomorrow's first MotoGP race at Circuit of The Americas:

Marc Márquez

Dani Pedrosa

Jorge Lorenzo

Cal Crutchlow

Stefan Bradl

Andrea Davizioso

Alvaro Bautista

Valentino Rossi

Aleiz Espargaro

Nicky Hayden

Bradley Smith

Ben Spies

Andrea Iannone

Randy de Puniet

Hector Barbera

Yonny Hernandez

Michael Laverty

Colin Edwards

Claudio Corti

Danilo Petrucci

Hiroshi Aoyama

Bryan Staring

Lukas Pesek

Blake Young

Who will win in Austin? Will we see a repeat of branded cowboy hats for the podium finishers? How will the pack of 24 react to the now famous Turn 1? History will be written in Austin tomorrow, be sure to tune in at 01:30 CDT on SPEED TV to witness the main event.